French press review 23 August 2016

French President Nicolas Sarkozy storms back into the news with a fresh bid to win back the Presidency.

Sarkozy launched his bid on Monday vowing to "keep promises made to the nation, defend, national identity, restore lost competitiveness, enforce state authority and strive "to restore confidence and hope in the future".

Libération

According to left-leaning newspaper, the ideas rolled out by Sarkozy are essentially copied from National Front leader Marine Le Pen's agenda for France while the rest are from Pierre Gattaz, the French busines executive who heads the corporate union MEDEF.

Accordinng to Libé, it is far-fetched for Sarkozy to imagine that things will get better in France once immigration whittles down, as soon as Muslims start putting on a low profile and once an entire segment of France's social security system is abolished. For Libération though the plan is lacking in pertinence, it at least has the merit of being crystal clear.

Le Figaro

The right-wing publication commends the manifesto claiming that it goes beyond the "basic liberalism" which critics try to link to the upcoming opposition Les Républicains presidential primaries.

As the right-wing publication puts it, on the contrary, Sarkozy's concept of more regulation should enable France to preserve its soul and culture. Le Figaro holds that it is now up to the other Presidential candidates to come clean so that conservative voters can identify the economy as the most important issue of the 2017 Presidential election.

Les Echos

The economic newspaper expresses surprise at the stress Sarkozy lays on the word "energy" in his electoral manifesto. 

According to Les Echos,  the two character traits identified with Nicolas Sarkozy during his time at the Elysée, were vigour and action., But as it observes he opted for "energetic", something it describes as "rare in politics". For Les Echos, while it was clearly by design, Sarkozy will need all the energy he can generate to confront the challenges of the time.

If Sarkozy wins, he could face a rematch against President Francois Hollande, who has also expressed a "desire" for a second term, despite opinion polls overwhelmingly showing that not many French want him as their leader.

Some newspapers believe that this may have helped shape the mind of former Socialist Minister Arnaud Montebourg who announced his own bid to challenge President Hollande on Sunday.

L'Opinion

"The former Economy Minister has lost nothing of his ideological hatred of globalisation, comments the conservative publication, adding that Montebourg's fascination for bigger government playing a powerful and efficient role in reviving the country is without limits.

L'Opinion says Montebourg is probably imagining that everything will become easy by closing France's borders and defaulting on France's European and international engagements.

La Croix

The Catholic daily takes up the worrying trend of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in situations of armed conflict. This after the guilty plea at The Hague of the Malian jihadist who ordered the destruction of the centuries-old Muslim shrines in Timbuktu.

Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi begged for forgiveness and urged other Muslims not to follow such "evil" ways. According to the Catholic daily, the demolishers of Timbuktu and the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra were clearly trying to destroy mankind's coillective conscience.